


Than Our Gentle Sin

by monanotlisa



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Animal Death, Canon Character of Color, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Crime Fighting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, First Time, Hospitals, Kissing, Organized Crime, POV Character of Color, POV Female Character, Post-Canon, References to Drugs, Touching, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-30 08:46:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3930457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monanotlisa/pseuds/monanotlisa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claire thought she could walk away from --</p><p>well, from most of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Than Our Gentle Sin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [no_detective](https://archiveofourown.org/users/no_detective/gifts).



> Follows the first season of _Daredevil_ on Netflix.

 

The snapshot on the cover page of The Daily Bugle is dark and grainy, but Claire knows every inch of the body depicted -- well, almost every inch.

The man they now call Daredevil is in a crouched position, coiled and ready to spring up the fire escape where the police photographer caught him. His face is half-shadowed, but in the light of the flash Claire can make out the sleekness of a molded mask, its horns, even the red shimmer of the costume -- the _body armor_ , she realizes. Matt did listen to her; he got a modicum of physical protection. Seeing this Daredevil all shiny and new in her newspaper is not exactly good news, but it’s better than nothing. It’s certainly better than reading all about the decomposing body of a young lawyer dragged out of the Hudson. 

“Back from your Florida vacation, I see. You also done with that?”

Claire’s thoracic spine clicks when she looks up. She gives Juanita a smile and the newspaper too -- slides it across the table. Juanita murmurs something that sounds sufficiently like _gracias_ and sinks into the second plastic chair with a groan. Her scrubs are a flurry of blue while she shifts and settles. “Tengo que echar una ojeada a los clasificados.”

Her face must have betrayed at least some mild curiosity. Juanita purses her lips and briskly turns the pages until she taps the rows of small print in the back section. “My magazines at home. It’s time for a side table that has storage space.”

Speaking of. The wall clock above them ticks mercilessly, so Claire pushes her seat back. “Buena suerte.” She nods Juanita good-bye. “Time for my shift.” 

It’s a slow night in the pharmacy for the monthly narcotics count, and it feels even more sterile and slow now that Claire’s head is still filled to the brim with Miami. But Claire forces herself to concentrate. Inventory matters; beginning supply plus deliveries to stock minus dispenses equal the ending supply. And that number matches -- 

Actually, it doesn’t. 

Claire blinks twice, looks from the cabinets and her list of controlled substances to the locked door requiring a key card. The substituted amphetamine and ketamine numbers don’t add up with what’s actually on the shelves. A prickle runs down her spine. There could of course be some mistake. Another bout of mismanagement. Wouldn’t be a first for Metro-General. Or even a fifth. 

Claire doesn’t hold her breath, but she repeats the count before making her way to the Head Nurse.

::

 _False alarm, Claire._ Attladottir’s words echo in Claire’s head. _I had the count run again, and the numbers check out. Must’ve been a long night. No repercussions for you. We understand._ The Head Nurse’s mouth smiled, but her eyes were chill and flinty like ice chips. 

Claire takes a slow breath and opens the newspaper.

Unlike three nights ago, there are no new Daredevil stories. But there are still stories that make Claire sit up and take note from her chair in the nursing station. _Rebuilding of NYPD Precinct 15 Proceeding Apace_ , in which “apace” apparently means “slowly and struggling” -- hardly a surprise after their precinct lost almost a third of its men. _Deluge of Designer Drug Deaths_ , which outlines a worrisome number of partygoers at Pacha and Stage 48 collapsing and dying on way to the hospital, before they could even make it to the Metro-General. A new dance club drug laced with an unidentified yet deadly substance, The Daily Bugle proclaims.

Claire reads the article again and again. Only when she washes her hands at the sink does she notice the black swirling down the drain: her fingers stained with black ink.

Hospital larceny involving drugs is not a small matter, no matter how contained and channeled. In a purposefully casual way Claire asks Juanita, who knows everything going on in Nursing and beyond; she bumps into Mike Chen because hospital administrators aren’t that good at keeping potential sources for litigation under wraps; she lends a hand to Shruti, the intern in the pharmacy with a knack for sorting systems and a love of Beyonce. No one has heard of any controlled substances disappearing, or any investigation at all.

Post-shift, she shoves open door between the staff section and the main corridor hard enough to make Nick McCall on the other side jump a little. “Hey,” he says, “gentle! Hospital property, Claire.” 

Claire concentrates on giving him a little smile. He’s one of the residents, six months in, always happy to help and cute enough for a white boy. But Claire already has her hand shoved deep into her coat pocket, fishing for the burner phone. It’s her direct line to Daredevil. It’s also hard to trace. 

“I’ll be careful from here on in,” she tells Nick. 

::

Three days later, after her shift, Claire doesn’t stumble into the nurses’ quarters. But it’s a close call. Her shoulders ache, and the strain in the back of her neck is slowly shifting into a headache. Wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, she reaches up to open her locker. Stops, because there’s a small message written on it in blue marker. _Claire -- check the green shelf in the kitchen before you leave?_

She frowns but takes off her scrubs, gets dressed in street clothes before wandering back into the Common Room. Just after 6am, Metro-General is humming with activity. Nurses and doctors stream in and out with varying degrees of bleariness. The night shift folks can seem chipper and the morning shift folks soured like milk left out, even before they meet their first patient.

The kitchen area in the Common Room is temporarily empty, and so is the low green shelf that usually holds people’s instant coffee, tea packs, or Oreos. Claire wants to turn away, but on impulse she ducks down to double-check. And there it is: Just underneath the green shelf lies the body of a rat. For a moment, her world spins, but Claire breathes out slowly through her nose until it steadies and pulls out a pair of the gloves she always carries around with her. The rat’s neck is snapped; it is definitely dead. It’s also still warm. 

Claire snaps off the glove and curls her fingers into a slow fist. _The message._

When she reaches her locker again, it’s clean. The neat block letters are gone, wiped off completely. Claire looks around the station, but no one seems to pay any attention. There’s no coworker who smiles, laughs, or pokes someone else’s side in prankster glee. Not that she wouldn’t have slapped them in that case.

Claire stares at the metal surface for a second, then takes out the burner phone again. Its display is still empty. Matt hasn’t called her, and that should be great; he most likely isn’t injured, the suit protecting him the way they’d discussed. 

She slides the phone back into her pocket. 

Half an hour later, knocking on Matt’s door, she’s fully aware of the fact it’s still before 7am on a Saturday. Matt could still be in bed, alone or with someone else. He could be tying up loose ends at his law firm -- Nelson & Murdock; she’s seen their ad -- or out running errands. 

But he’s home. When Matt opens the door, there’s that hot rush in her chest again. He’s not wearing his dark glasses, so his face is bare. “Claire,” he says and smiles. Not surprised, of course. For once there are no visible abrasions on his face, and his posture is relaxed. She’s struck by how soft he looks in the early morning light; the blue hoodie and ratty cargo pants he’s wearing do nothing to dispel that illusion. His eyes don’t focus on her, but she imagines she can feel all his other senses honing in on her. “Come in. Are you okay?”

The urge to reach out and touch him is strong. “I’m fine, but that could change.” 

He frowns, takes a step forward before faltering a little. “Do you need or want anything -- coffee, tea, water?”

She looks down and knows the smile on her face is tired. He cannot see but he must be able to hear. “In a way. Could I use your shower?” His eyebrows rise a little, so she says, “I came straight from the hospital.”

“By all means, let’s do our part to stop the spread of MRSA.”

Claire feels the corner of her mouth lift up a little. “Thanks.” And she is grateful, all the way into the bathroom and the shower. Under the hot spray, her muscles relax minutely, and even her mind wanders for a moment. So she could have left some shampoo at his place, after all. Some soap not in the form of an unscented bar.

Once out of the shower, Claire does not look into the mirror. At least this time around she’s not hurt? Not on the outside. She pulls on his robe again, though. It’s still damp from his own morning shower, and of course it smells like Matt. Claire shakes her head, tries to clear it. This is not helping. None of this is.

“Hey there,” Matt says when she comes out of the bathroom, his voice carrying across the loft. Once more he’s made food in his kitchen; she smells oatmeal and coffee and something fruity. 

She shakes her head, slowly. “The term _déja-vu_ comes to mind, but that’s probably cruel to use around a blind man.”

It’s his turn to laugh a little ruefully. “I’m hungry. And you clearly need something here.” He puts two spoons into the bowls, carries them both over to the coffee table, and puts them down. “Tell me what’s going on.” He holds out his hands to her, palms lifted up as the offer it is.

Claire is suddenly, absurdly grateful that their relationship, whatever it is, allows them to touch, makes that at least easy. She curls her fingers into his. Matt’s hands are warm and solid, a little rough -- the scars on his skin are too faint for people who don’t know they're there, but underneath the surface she feels the small shifts in bone and tendon, knuckles thickened from breaking and healing and breaking and healing.

Of the parts others can see, Matt’s hands are the only part that betrays his extracurricular activities. 

“You’re nervous,” he says. Claire is sure no one needs super-senses for that, but still, she appreciates his attention. “Let’s sit down.” Matt leads her to the sofa with unerring precision, his fingers slowly stroking over hers. She takes a deep breath and tells him about the missing drugs, being told she’d made a mistake, how there was no follow-up -- apart from a clear message to her in the shape of a dead rat. How the police investigation went nowhere despite her anonymous tip-off. 

Matt winces at the rat story, but in the end he digs into the part that bugs her, too, the most: “You’re saying the police came and went without doing anything?”

Not quite. “The Gang and Narcotics Division questioned us -- after I’d made the phone call to the 15th precinct, I took an extra shift to be around for when they talked to the Head Nurse. Who claimed nothing was actually wrong.” 

He extricates his fingers from hers to run them through his hair. His face is serious. “There’s no chance she would be kept out of the loop of an investigation, I guess.”

“None.” Even if it were possible to investigate without Nursing, Attladottir would be part of the inner circle at Metro-General. “They’re covering it up. My pharmacy and narcotics access has been cut, but one of my coworkers looked at the records again; they look perfectly clean. I’ve thought about alerting the DEA or FBI myself, but…”

“...but you think they’d run into the same wall of denial and cover-up in the records.”

“It’s a hospital, Matt. It’s a maze of healthcare administrators, insurance investigators, and a shit-ton of lawyers.” Matt smirks, and Claire finds herself flashing him a grin too. “The evil kind, not like you.” She smoothes her fingers over the red leather of the couch and flicks away a speck of dust, then another. “I think whoever is running this knows the system too well. There have been more deaths in the clubs just last night.” 

He nods and bites his lips. It really shouldn’t be so distracting to watch Matt’s mouth. “The radio news wasn’t shy with the ugly details -- pills in pockets, bodily fluids leaked.“ His head tilts a little to the side, the way it does when he’s thinking about sharing something. “The stuff’s not out on the streets. I started looking after the first victim, that twenty-one year old guy at Stage 48. But no one’s selling it on corners.”

There wouldn’t be, she thinks. “They’re selling the speed and the k in the clubs, cut with whatever they cooked up in their labs. And you couldn’t tell the club-goers with dope from the ones without.” Wait. “Or can you?”

Matt laughs. It’s a self-deprecating sound, but it’s not entirely without warmth. “Five weeks ago I tried finding a mob courier with a half-pound of heroin -- but I didn’t know the guy. If the stuff’s in powder or pill form and carried in a plastic bag, I won’t be able to sense it. Every drug-sniffing dog is better than me at that.” 

Cute. Also, bad news. It’s her turn to bite her lip. Matt Murdock is already passing on bad habits; she knew it. “We know where the pills end up. So we know where their sellers are. From there, from the clubs, you will have your guys, and their tells. You can track them so we stop this shit from the other side.”

His mouth quirks. “ _We_ , Claire?” 

God damn him. “Don’t count yourself lucky just yet.”

“I’m always lucky when you’re around,” he says, and it’s the simplicity of the statement that does her in. Maybe it’s even the truth.

Claire’s fingers close around the zipper of his hoodie, give it a light tug. “Charmer.” It’s an invitation, and not misunderstood. Matt’s slowly-blooming smile could light up a room. It’s certainly lighting her up. 

This time around they’re both unhurt. She doesn’t taste blood when he leans in and touches his lips to hers -- just Matt, Matt, Matt. He kisses her carefully, but with intent, and she can’t keep a brief moan down. It would be embarrassing, except he already knows she’s burning up; he can hear her heart skipping a beat. He can smell her. Talk about a world on fire. 

“I’ve missed you,” he murmurs into her mouth, “I’ve missed you so much, Claire.” His right hand cradles her cheek, tangles into her still-wet hair. With his left he clasps her shoulder, brushes the side of her neck. Claire shivers at the sensation.

“You scare me,” she whispers. “The things you do, to yourself and others. But what’s out there scares me more.” 

He pulls back a little. His pale cheeks are flushed. He’s a fool but he’s brave, and maybe that’s enough. “We’ve taken down the Russians. Fisk is toppled. We can take these people too. Together.”

Claire doesn’t ask, _At what price?_ She slides her mouth over his, closes her teeth a little more fiercely than she’d planned around his lower lip briefly before pulling back. His mouth is even redder now, and he breathes in sharply. “Claire, you’re free to tell me you don’t want this. But I’d really prefer if you did.” 

Lawyers. She wants to kiss the proper grammar right out of his mouth. “I’ve always wanted this.” She pulls the zipper of his hoodie down all the way, and loves his sharp intake of breath, the way he shrugs out of the top so quickly it tangles on one side. His chest and abs look amazing, even dotted with bruises all the colors of the rainbow. She runs her fingers along his ribcage, flicks her nails across his nipples so that he twitches, pushes forward into her hands. “I’ve just never thought it was a good idea.”

“I can be your bad idea,” he says, and Lord, it’s too true. Matt’s smile is sweet enough to make her chest ache. He has the face of an angel, but she only needs to let her gaze drop to know: He’s not the cherub in the background of a painting; he stands proud and holds a flaming sword. Glorious but bruised, still-humming from battles for souls and salvation.

She’s not an angel. She’s not a hero. All Claire wants to do is help people. But this night has shown her she can’t do that the way she used to. And of course there's another way, the one paved with good intentions. 

“You can be mine,” she says, and feels her heart skipping not one but several beats when he shudders at this. “I’ll be yours.” 

His voice dips, rough, “God, Claire.” His hands are on her shoulders, sliding down the bathrobe, reaching around to her shoulder blades, running his hands up and down her back. “Please, please, let me --”

“Yeah,” she says, undoes the knot of the bathrobe, sits up so the fabric falls back, leaves her naked. She’s on her knees on the sofa, poised half over Matt, his head tilting up to track her movement; even unseeing his eyes are wide and captivated. He lets out another choked-off sound and touches his forehead to her clavicle. In another heartbeat Matt is pressing a kiss to the hollow of her throat that has her tremble, closing his mouth around her right nipple, and -- “Fuck, _Matt_.”

“On it,” he manages to say, although it comes out breathless, tongue circling her nipple once more and making her whimper. “Lie back.”

His bed would be better, but she’s already sinking into the sofa, against the pillows, and Matt scoots down to push her legs apart so his head fits between, and actually, this is fine; Claire can deal with this too. Can deal with the calloused pads of his fingers along her pussy, wet enough to drip on the leather. She moans when his fingers hold her open and he breathes her in, all hot breath and hotter sounds. And then his tongue is on her, inside of her, and she whispers his name again, and again like a prayer. Matt wasn’t lying earlier; he is hungry, ravenous, and when he slides fingers into her and crooks them just right, she arches up and comes apart in an explosion of red behind her clenched-shut eyelids.

When the tremors subside, she blinks, runs her hand through his hair and pulls him up. “Matt,” she murmurs, raw, and of course he’s nimble; he’s lost the cargo pants and his underwear already, if he ever wore any. He licks his lips, beautiful, flushed and hard. She forces her eyes up to his face again, knowing he knows. "Protection?" 

"Yeah, of course." He nods and rapidly scrambles in the drawer of the table like the well-prepared man he is. "You want to --"

"Please." It's her time to say it, to take the foil package from him. Matt moves like water, suddenly on his hands and knees over her supine form, and it’s easy to slide the rubber onto his cock. There’s a sheen of perspiration on his upper lip that she leans up to lick away. Salt and the spiciness she associates with him and only him. She’s dexterous too, though: runs an experimental hand up and down his length, thumb circling the slick head of his cock. She tries gripping him softly and then harder, but he bucks backward. “Claire, please.” The way his voice sounds sends hot sparks down her spine, again, and she swallows.

“Come here,” she says, and he does, sliding into the cradle of her legs. She reaches down to guide his cock into her, and his hips snap forward hard. It’s good; it’s better than good, being finally filled. Matt’s mouth slants over hers and swallows Claire’s groan, teeth clicking against hers once, before he pulls back and starts moving in earnest inside her. His lips are gentle now, a thrilling contrast to the rapid slap of his hips against hers. Her position is stable enough that she manages to wedge a hand between them, slide it onto her clit so that every push and shove -- yeah. This. _This_

When Matt comes, it’s sudden and deceptively quiet, a tremble and something that sounds almost like a sob, and Claire wraps her legs around his and anchors him in place, her arms tight around his chest. To hold, if not to have forever.

::

Claire startles awake. Matt and she are still tangled together on the couch, but at some point he’s pulled his fluffy bathrobe over her to keep her warm. She slowly turns her head to look at him smiling in his sleep, at the planes and angles of his body fully known to her. And for now, for now she can’t see the devil in him.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Thanks to Victoria P. for looking over this.  
> 2\. It's probably illegal how often I have watched [this Matt/Claire vid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA4LwnAbx7I).  
> 3\. As you know, Bob, this is basically just the beginning of the story; there's totally a trope-y followup percolating in the back of my brain.


End file.
